by Jamel Cato
“No,” my soul said flatly. “I don’t want to focus. I don’t want to give you more time. I don’t want more pain.”
“What of your oath to Darnell Bataille?” Naaru asked.
When I’d met Darnell Bataille, he was a fifteen-year-old boy in New Orleans who was possessed by a demon. The demon had convinced him that killing the people in his neighborhood would be a greater mercy than the lives of assured poverty, racism and violence they would endure by virtue of being born in a place like the Lower 9th Ward.
After a few unfortunate deaths and a long chase through dangerous Parish streets, I was able to help Darnell push the demon out, in part by making him a promise that I would never give up on life if he didn’t.
Sixteen months later, Darnell was shot and killed by someone in his neighborhood. The demon who had possessed him still taunts me to this day.
Darnell visited me when he passed through the Astral Plane. I worried he was there to haunt me, but all he had said was, “Keep your word, O.G.”
But how had Naaru known of this? Had he glimpsed it when he joined with my mind? Regardless, he was right. Oaths did not end so easily, especially not the kind involving life itself.
I stopped resisting Naaru’s call. I breathed slowly, even though I technically knew that souls did not breathe at all. My essence was gently pulled away from the parking lot like a hooked fish being reeled toward a rod.
I felt a slight disorientation when I passed from the Astral Plane into a strange new realm. The dark air was filled with marble sized twinkling stars that were close enough to touch. Many of the stars were connected by beams of light. We passed one that was so bright it made me turn away.
I came to a stop.
I heard Naaru’s voice say, “From the sky to the water, from the mountain to the tree, your body makes and keeps us, Great Kulara.”
He was speaking his native tongue, but I could understand it.
“Why have you dishonored me by bringing an Earth Eater into my presence?” a thunderous but distinctly feminine voice asked.
I tried to yell out in fear, but discovered I could not speak.
“Forgive me, Might of the Wind, Rage of the Storm. This Earth Eater can help us close the Gates of Destruction.”
“How can this fragile monster accomplish such a thing? Its body is broken. Its kanu prepares to travel to Ushola as we speak.”
“Its mind has the gift of speaking with the non-breathers of its world, Great Light of the Day. It is the only one we have found with such an ability. It may speak with your counterpart on Earth and entreat her to prevent the formation of new glyphs so the Gates will remain closed.”
I studied the twinkling stars while Kulara considered this. They weren’t actually stars.
“This abomination has your sight?”
“It does, Deep Essence of the Life-Giving Soil.”
“What do you seek of me?”
“Heal its body, Fearsome Heat of the Flame. Restore the Earth Eater’s flesh so it may be fit to carry out this task.”
“By the rushing of the water,” the Wruvian Mother Nature said in assent.
I was snapped back into my body.
I sat up to survey the chaos swirling around me. My car was still burning. People ran in every direction, some yelling about a terrorist attack. Sirens wailed in the distance.
I felt a tingle in both of my palms, like I had rested my hands on top of an active ant mound. I looked down. My clothing was burned and shredded, but my body felt strong and pain free. I twisted around to find that the asphalt beneath me had been replaced by rich, dark soil that was teeming with unusual glowing insects and worms that seemed to be composed entirely of light. A small stand of lush green grass had sprouted around the outline of my body.
My ecological examination was interrupted by a pair of EMT technicians, who lifted me onto a gurney.
Chapter 18
The physician assigned to my ward at the Hospital was an attractive third year resident named Rachael Sanchez.
“Do your patients flirt with you a lot?” I asked as she examined me for the third time that day.
“You mean like one of them is doing right now? Deep breath.”
After exhaling, I said, “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted to say—”
“That if your family doctor looked like me you would be the healthiest man in America. Deep breath.”
I frowned. That’s exactly what I had been planning to say. “You wound my gentlemanly honor.”
She laughed. “That’s not a wound I’m familiar with. Why do you ask?”
“I mean, you’re skip-a-bill-to-take-you-on-vacation gorgeous. And you’ve come back in here three times already to feel me up, which I’m thinking is not the norm for a busy ER like this.”
“So you think I’m flirting with you?”
“I’m just a man asking a question.”
She put her stethoscope back around her neck. “I’ve been back here three times because your admission paperwork, four witnesses and two EMTs claim you were directly adjacent to a car bomb explosion last evening. Either all of them are suffering a mass hallucination or you have internal injuries that we are somehow missing.”
“Or maybe there was no explosion,” I proposed.
“There was. It was on the news. And lots of people posted pics of the scene on Facebook. You were in some of them.”
“What was I doing?”
“Lying on the ground next to a burning car. You were wearing the same scorched clothing you had on when they rolled you into the ER. I went down to Patient Services to look at your clothes myself.”
“Feeling me up and going through my pockets? I might have to give you a bad score on those surveys they send you after you leave the hospital.”
“I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t do that,” she said in a concerned tone.
“Why?”
“Because the hospital takes those surveys very seriously. They affect how much Medicare will pay for an episode. And my Bedside Manner scores are already on shaky ground.”
“Really? I find that hard to believe. Your bedside manner is wonderful.”
“When I don’t flirt back, some patients use the survey to get their revenge.”
“That’s shady,” I said. “Crazy shady. I would never do that.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“As long as it’s a quick one related to your treatment. I have rounds and the nurses and PA’s are already gossiping about the number of times I’ve been in here.”
“What if I could provide you with scientific proof of how the injuries I suffered in the explosion were miraculously healed before I got to the ER?”
She thought for a few seconds. “The only reason I’m entertaining this is because your bloodwork and vitals are ideal for your height and weight. Better than ideal actually because you’re not even carrying the benign organisms that over ninety percent of adults carry. You’re not just in great health, you’re in perfect health. Statistically speaking, that shouldn’t be possible.”
“So what would you do with that knowledge?”
She folded her arms. “Are you being serious?”
“Very.”
She considered it. “I would use it to help as many people as I could, especially the incurable cases.”
“You mean personally helping them or turning the discovery over to the Government and trusting that it would do the helping?”
She handed me a digital thermostat. “If someone walks in here, stick that in your mouth.” Then she came very close to my bedside and said, “Stem cells.”
“What about them?”
She began speaking with a Spanish accent that had been completely absent before then. “I’m from a tiny town in Puerto Rico called Cantebarra. If you find me attractive, you would think my hometown was a paraíso because there are women and girls who look like me every way your head turns. And when I say look
like me, I mean just like me. The reason for that is our community’s lack of genetic diversity. Our small population is rife with birth defects and other pathologies that could be addressed by Stem Cell Therapy. Even though the Government is well aware of this, no one in Cantebarra will be receiving that kind of treatment in my lifetime. It’s why I went to Med School. Part of the explanation is the cost of stem cells, but a larger part of it is not. If I came into possession of a miraculous medical technology, you wouldn’t see it in a medical journal or a CDC lab for a very long time. And it would only happen at all because the people I had helped had become too numerous to ignore.”
I smiled. “Go to the parking lot where the explosion happened. Take a soil sample of the spot where they recovered my body. It should be easy to spot because there will be a patch of grass shaped like me. Collect two samples. Take one sample to a lab and expose it to a diseased specimen of any kind. Try to go as soon as possible. The property is well maintained and I expect that spot to be repaved any minute now.”
“What about the second sample?”
“Save that one for me.”
“Why?”
“After I take it to Cantebarra, I’ll make sure it doesn’t become the next Stem Cell Therapy.”
When Dr. Sanchez departed to tend to her rounds, I turned to the ghost of her father and said, “Gracias.”
They moved me to a private room in the Step Down Unit to complete the remainder of my mandatory twenty-four-hour observation period.
I got visits from Alan, Pat, two friends in the area and Eve, who materialized next to my bed and showed me genuine concern.
“Napoleon called and said the file is ready whenever you can stop by,” she said. “And the meeting with Julia Minton is all set for Friday if you’re well enough to attend. I can reschedule it if you’re not. I started to do that before I came here.”
“Don’t reschedule it,” I said. “I’m fine. I’ll be there.”
“There’s something else, but I wonder if I should save it for later. Stress never helps the body recover.”
“What is it?”
“I think we’ve been hacked.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Some of the files on the office PC have modified dates later than the last time I opened them. I logged into the cable account and it said our bandwidth consumption was ten times higher than usual. We’ve used almost exactly enough data to send an entire copy of the harddrive over the Internet.”
“Are we being targeted or is it just some script kiddie in Romania having fun?”
“Pretty sure they’re targeting you personally.”
“That right?”
“They didn’t open any of the honeypot files I keep on the computer, not even the fake passwords or bank statements. No ransomware hacker would have ignored those. And there’s a tracking trojan in your Office365 calendar.”
“How long has it been there?”
“About a week as far as I can tell.”
“Hmm. I’ll switch to the Google Calendar for now.”
“I’ve already migrated all your appointments to it and downloaded the app to your phone.”
“Awesome. Anything else pressing?”
She looked down at me. “Hot Date?”
She always asked me that whenever I seemed in a rush. This time I surprised her and said, “Yes. Seven tonight.”
“You really plan to go straight from the hospital to a date?”
“I’ll stop and get wine first.”
“Wine? She’s having you over?”
“We’re skipping the formalities.”
“I see you haven’t been spending all your time working the case. Who’s the lucky girl?”
Before I could answer, a police detective peeked his head into my room. “Mr. Tiptree?”
“That’s me.”
The law man came in, followed by a female detective.
I’d say he was about forty-five, definitely under fifty. He was white, stocky and completely bald on top. He was wearing a necktie with a short sleeved shirt, which made me want to issue a citation for a violation of the Style Code.
His partner, also white, was short and about thirty. The cut of her hair and clothing made me pretty certain she would never run into Pat in the designer handbag department of Neiman Marcus.
“I’m Detective Fahrbach,” the man said. “This is Detective Gilreath. We wanted to know if you were up to answering a few questions. Shouldn’t take long.”
“Did they find the perpetrator?” I asked.
“Which perp would that be?” Fahrbach asked.
“The one who planted a bomb in my rental car.”
“Why would someone want to car bomb you?” Gilbreath blurted out, signaling the kind of questioning this would be.
I looked at Gilreath, then back at Fahrbach. “Do you always visit recovering victims in the hospital with accusatory questions or am I special?”
“No one accused you of anything,” Gilreath said.
“Ask me something that lets me know you’re out looking for the terrorist who did this or the next word I say will start with the letter L.”
Fahrbach turned to Gilreath. “Why don’t you go down to Patient Records and get a list of all the visitors to POI 3 in the last ninety days. Ask for Stephanie Zulick. She helps the PD out all the time with these requests. She knows the drill.”
Gilreath left the room with a discuss-this-later look.
“Mind if I have a seat, Mr. Tiptree?”
“You the poe-lease,” I said. “I just live here.”
Fahrbach gave me one of those smiles that don’t convey mirth and sat down in my visitor’s chair. “That was a great movie. Denzel deserved an Oscar for that.”
“I know you’re not here to discuss cinema and we both know that no judge in Mecklenburg County who you’ve appeared in front of a hundred times will take my word over yours about anything without a YouTube video, DNA evidence and a signed letter from the Pope, so let’s talk openly before Gilreath gets back. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“We’re working the Balzano case, not the car bombing case from last night.”
“The Balzano case?”
He studied my face like it was a secret truth meter only Police could see. “Tammy Balzano, the missing little girl from Hillside Country Club.”
“Oh, okay. How can I help with that?”
“You know anything about that?”
“What, the case? Not really. Pat mentioned it to me, but I didn’t even know the girl’s last name until just now.”
“What’s the nature of your relationship with Mrs. Hollenbeck?”
“I’m an investigator helping the family with a private matter.”
“Is that what Mr. Hollenbeck would say?”
“That’s all he can say because that’s all there is.”
“What kind of matter are you supposedly investigating?”
“A matter covered by a confidentiality agreement. You’re welcome to speak with Pat. She can give you the details, but legally I can’t.”
“Do her investigators usually spend the night or get visits from her when they’re in the hospital?”
“Regardless of any speculation you heard from Christine Riles, there’s no relationship between Pat and myself but a business one. Why don’t you ask me something you don’t already know the answer to?”
“Have you ever met or been near Tammy Balzano?”
“No,” I said, looking him right in the eyes. He was asking about the living Tammy Balzano and qualifying my answer with “Not while she was living” would have had me in handcuffs faster than a bullet train.
“Do you know anything about her disappearance?”
“No.”
“Why would someone want to plant a bomb in your car?”
“I have no idea. I was hoping you would help me find that out.”
“Do you have a list of enemies we could start with?”
“I could give you a lis
t of people who have something against me, but none of them would do something like this.”
“How do you know that?”
“The same way you know that someone who was involved in Tammy Balzano’s disappearance would never speak to you as frankly and comfortably as I’m speaking to you now. I’m sure you verified my whereabouts, my investigator’s license and my empty rap sheet before you set foot in this hospital. You already know I couldn’t have had anything to do with the Balzano case but you thought it would be a good learning exercise for Gilreath until she started letting her upbringing do the talking.”
“Since we’re speaking so openly, I’ll admit I don’t think you had any direct involvement in the disappearance. But I think you know things about Hillside Country Club that could help us find out who did. And you’re banging Pat Hollenbeck.”
“Put a Stingray on all my devices then. You don’t need a warrant for that, at least not yet.”
“You seem to know a lot about Police procedures and tactics for someone without a record. You have cops in your family?”
“An uncle and a cousin. Philly PD.”
“Ah,” he said.
I knew his “Ah” meant That explains the clean rap sheet and not Here is the loved one of a brother in blue.
“You look pretty good for a man who sat directly above a detonated car bomb not even a day ago. I was surprised when the Doc allowed us to see you.”
“It’s a miracle,” I said.
“I don’t believe in miracles,” Fahrbach retorted. “At least not when it comes to missing little girls and car bombs.”
“There’s nothing else I can say about it.”
“Nothing you can say or nothing you’re going to say?”
“Nothing meaning nothing.”
Gilreath walked in without knocking or otherwise announcing herself.
“I have the list,” she said to her training officer.
Fahrbach rose from his seat and placed his business card on the rolling food tray next to my bed. “If you think of anything else, even if it doesn’t seem pertinent, get in touch with us.”
“Will do,” I said.
When the door closed behind the detectives, Eve said, “You shouldn’t speak to the Police like that. It’s dangerous.”